Laceys of Liverpool (18 page)

She’d seen off her aunts in the end, but the following years had been hard. She had slept on the streets for a while, because no one wanted to give a job to a girl who couldn’t add up, couldn’t read, who didn’t even know how to behave proper.

Eventually she’d got a live-in job cleaning for a woman who owned half a dozen lodging houses.

‘Did no one ever teach you how to use a knife and fork?’ the woman asked on her first night – Cora was eating the food with her fingers.

She’d learnt how to use cutlery, when to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, to wipe her bum when she went to the lavatory, to change her clothes before they began to smell. She’d learnt also to read and write, do sums. The woman she worked for had helped. She said Cora had a quick brain. It was a shame she hadn’t learnt all these things before. She would have done well at school.

When she was twenty she’d met Billy Lacey, very personable and far better-looking than the men who’d shown interest in her so far. By the time he proposed, Cora had already realised he was a loser. She far preferred his brother, John, who was the dead opposite, but apart from being polite, otherwise he showed no interest in his brother’s fiancée. Still, if she married Billy she’d get her own house. For a while it didn’t matter that it was in O’Connell Street.

It hadn’t been long before wishy-washy Alice Mitchell appeared on the scene, hanging like a leech on to the
arm of John Lacey. Apart from her aunts, Cora didn’t think she’d ever hated anyone before as much as she hated Alice on the day she married John and changed her name from Mitchell to Lacey.

The urge to
be
someone, to have beautiful things, was just as strong, but stronger still was the need to be one up on Alice Lacey. Cora thought she had achieved this with her handsome, stolen son, with the house in Garibaldi Road, with the third share she had wangled in the hairdresser’s, but somehow Alice always seemed to go one better.

Cora stared balefully at the son who’d let her down so badly. She reached for the cane and flexed it between her hands. Nodding towards a chair, she said curtly, ‘Bend over.’

To her everlasting surprise, Maurice ignored her.

‘Bend over,’ Cora insisted, aware a note of hysteria had crept into her voice.

‘No.’ He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his grey shorts and looked at her stubbornly.

‘In that case . . .’ She raised the cane and whipped it against his shoulders. It must have hurt through the thin cotton of his shirt, but it was like rainwater off a duck’s back as far as Maurice was concerned. Cora raised the cane again and was taken aback when he caught the end in his hand. For several awful seconds’ they tussled over possession, but he was a big, strong lad for eleven, stronger than she was, and he easily won.

For a horrible moment, Cora half expected the cane to be turned on her. She cowered against the wall, arms raised protectively, but Maurice merely bent it till it broke in two. He threw the pieces on the table and stared at them for a long time, as if wondering why he’d never done it before.

‘Huh!’ he muttered and walked out of the room. She
assumed he was on his way upstairs to sulk in his bedroom. Instead, seconds later, the front door slammed. Cora flew down the hall and opened it.

‘Where are you going?’ she called shakily.

‘To the park to play with me mates.’

She’d lost him! Her body froze with horror. He was the only person in the world she had ever loved, the only person who had loved her in return. She wanted him back, would do anything to get him back, but had a horrible, sickly feeling that it was too late.

And, as usual, it was all the fault of Alice Lacey.

She felt as if she’d been pregnant for ever. She could hardly walk she was so big. Maybe she was expecting quins like that woman in Canada. The bed creaked like mad every time she turned over and she turned over all night long, waking Micky, who was red-eyed with tiredness in the mornings.

But Orla didn’t care. She didn’t care if his eyes fell out or his head dropped off. All she cared about was herself and her predicament.

She hated Micky, whose fault it was that she was in this mess, and she hated her dad for not letting them have the parlour in Amber Street, a much nicer place to be. She hated her sisters: Fionnuala looked so superior, as if trying to say, ‘
I’d
never get in a mess like you,’ which was probably true, as there wasn’t a boy in Bootle who’d go near her, and you’d think Maeve had delivered hundreds of babies the way she kept offering advice, yet there wasn’t a maternity ward in Bootle hospital.

Most of all, she hated the Lavins for . . . oh, for all sorts of reasons. There was always a row going on for one thing, or two or three rows, come to that, with people screaming at each other at the tops of their voices from rooms all over the house. She hated the way they came
into the parlour to watch the bloody telly when she was trying to rest and instead she had Gilbert Harding or Barbara Kelly or Lady-stinking-Barnet bawling down her ear. She hated the fact that Mrs Lavin sent one of the kids every morning to pinch a bottle of milk off someone’s step for the expectant mother, then sat, watching the same expectant mother while she drank every bloody drop, oozing bloody sympathy and acquainting her with the gory details of her own nine births.

It was horrible, sitting down to a nice meal of roast beef, or lamb chops, or chicken, to have Mr Lavin wink and say, ‘You’ll never guess where this came from!’

Orla had guessed months ago – well, who wouldn’t! The food was stolen, it had ‘fallen off the back of a lorry’. She imagined Mr Lavin running after a speeding lorry, picking up the joints of meat that were being scattered in its wake. All Mrs Lavin ever bought was vegetables. The other day there’d been a trifle, a huge thing in a fluted cardboard case.

‘You’ll never guess where that came from!’ Mr Lavin winked.

How the hell had he managed to nick a
trifle?

Orla groaned. If she were still working for the
Crosby Star
, she might be interviewing a politician right now, or have been sent to cover a murder.

The lovely chiming clock on the mantelpiece, which had no doubt come the same way as virtually everything else in the house, struck five o’clock. Mam would be back in Amber Street soon, and she’d go round and see her. It was the only place where she got any peace and Mam was the only person in the world whom she didn’t hate. Oh, and their Cormac.

Alice was just unlocking the salon door on a drizzly morning in September when Micky Lavin skidded to a
halt outside on a rusty bicycle. ‘It’s Orla,’ he gasped. ‘She’s gone to the hospital. The pains started about an hour ago.’

‘Oh, dear!’ It meant the baby was going to be a fortnight early, or two and a half months early if people were expected to believe Orla had remained virtuous until her wedding night. People never would! She prayed the baby would be small so she could claim it was premature.

It was a terrible way to think when her daughter was about to give birth. Alice nudged the thought to one side and said anxiously to Micky, ‘Is she all right?’

Micky rolled his eyes. ‘Is Orla ever all right? She was screaming blue murder when I came to get you.’

‘I’ll look after the salon, Mam,’ Fion offered. ‘Patsy’11 be along shortly and Doreen’s in this avvy. We’ll manage between us, don’t worry.’

‘Ta, luv.’ There were times when Fion could be extremely capable. ‘I’ll try and ring from the nursing home, tell you what’s happening, like.’ To Micky she said, ‘You get along back, luv. I’ll catch a tram. I’ll be there in no time.’

Orla was in a side ward still screaming blue murder, when her mother arrived, out of breath, excited and at the same time dreading the next few hours.

‘It hurts,’ Orla yelled. ‘Oh, Mam, the pains hurt really, really bad.’

Alice’s heart sank when she saw Mrs Lavin sitting in a chair next to the bed. She was holding Orla’s hand and singing a lullaby for some reason. ‘Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top . . .’

No wonder Orla was screaming.

‘Why don’t you go home, Mam, and see to the brekkies,’ Micky suggested, as if sensing the presence of his mother wasn’t helping.

‘. . . when the tree falls, the baby will stop,’ Mrs Lavin crooned. ‘Or is it drop? Hello, Mrs Lacey. She’s having a wicked time, just like I did when I had quite a few of mine. Our Micky, though, he just popped out, like a pea from a pod.’

‘
Mam
!’ Orla screeched.

‘I’ll take over now, shall I, Mrs Lavin? You’ve got little ’uns to see to, not like me.’

‘Well . . .’ Mrs Lavin seemed reluctant to give up Orla’s hand or her seat beside the bed.

‘I think they only allow two visitors, Mam,’ Micky said.

‘Oh, I’ll be off then.’ Mrs Lavin left after making Micky promise to come and tell her the minute the baby arrived. ‘I’ll bring some flowers and a bunch of grapes,’ she said generously.

‘Only if she finds a lorry for them to drop off,’ Orla said through clenched teeth when the door closed. ‘I’m more likely to get a side of beef or a chicken already trussed.’

‘Try not to talk, luv.’ Micky tenderly stroked the brow of his young wife. ‘Save your breath for the pains. They’re called contractions,’ he said to Alice as if she didn’t already know. ‘They get closer and closer as the time comes for the baby to be born. I read it in a book,’ he said proudly, ‘that I got out the library.’

Orla had got a bloke in a million, Alice thought. It would take time, he was only twenty, but if she stuck it out she’d do well with Micky Lavin.

‘Shurrup, Micky,’ Orla snapped. ‘Oh, there’s another pain coming! Oh, Mam!’

Alice became quite impatient with her daughter as the morning progressed and she continued to scream and yell. There were two other women having babies at the same time and between them they didn’t make half the
fuss that Orla did. Alice suspected the screams were directed at Micky in an attempt to make him feel guilty.

The labour lasted five and a half hours and Orla was whisked to the delivery ward the minute the midwife judged her ready to give birth.

Alice and Micky sat in the corridor outside and waited for the screams to start again. To their surprise, in no time at all, the door opened and the midwife appeared. ‘It’s a girl,’ she said jubilantly. ‘She’s absolutely beautiful and a whole seven pounds, two ounces. I’ve never known such a swift and painless birth. Congratulations – Dad! Would you like to come and see your daughter?’

Micky looked wistfully at Alice. ‘Now it’s all over, I wonder if she’ll be happy? Will she stop blaming me, do you think? I love her, Mrs Lacey. I love her more than anything on earth.’

‘I know you do, luv.’ Alice kissed him, but felt unable to offer a single hopeful promise for the future. Her wilful, strong-minded daughter apparently considered this rather decent young man had ruined her life for ever.

‘I’ll go and see her now.’ Micky was scarcely gone a minute, when he came out again. ‘She wants you,’ he said. His eyes were bright with tears.

‘Why don’t you nip home and tell your mam?’ Alice said.

‘I’ll do that.’ He looked relieved to have something to do.

The midwife had been right! The new baby was beautiful, a perfectly formed little girl, not the least bit red or crumpled like some babies and already with a fine head of dark, curly hair. Her eyes were wide open and her tiny body wriggled impatiently against the tightly wrapped blanket.

‘She’s going to be a lively one,’ her grandmother whispered. ‘I suppose it’s all right if I pick her up.’

As she nursed her first grandchild, Alice wished with all her heart that John were there, not the John of now, but the one she had married. This was a unique moment, the sort a woman should share with her husband. She sighed.
Her
husband seemed no longer interested in his family.

‘Have you decided on a name yet?’ she asked Orla. Names for the baby had been the only thing that had sparked her interest over the last months.

‘Lulu,’ Orla said listlessly.

Alice had never heard Lulu mentioned before and thought it awful, like a music hall turn or a silent film star. However, it seemed wise to keep her trap shut.

‘Hello, Miss Lulu Lavin,’ she whispered. The baby stirred in her arms and uttered a tiny cry. ‘I think she might want a feed. Are you up to it, luv?’

‘I’m not sure. I feel as if I’ve just been dragged through the mill and back again,’ Orla said weakly.

‘The midwife said she’d never known such a swift and painless birth.’

‘How would she know?’ Orla demanded in a voice that was suddenly weak no more.

Alice shrugged. ‘Through experience, I guess. What was it you said to Micky to make him leave so quick?’

‘I told him I didn’t want to see him, that I wanted you. Frankly, I don’t care if I ever see him or the Lavins again.’

‘Then why did you marry the poor lad?’

Orla pouted. ‘I didn’t have much choice, did I?’

‘You didn’t have many choices,’ Alice conceded, ‘but you didn’t
have
to marry him. Nor, I might remind you, did
he
have to marry
you
. Another chap might have run a mile, or claimed the baby wasn’t his. But Micky did the honourable thing and you’ve made his life a misery ever since.’ Oh, it was hard, speaking so sternly to her pretty,
distressed daughter, who was probably expecting buckets of sympathy, not a lecture, off her mam. ‘I take it the . . . er, the time you conceived, he didn’t rape you, that you were just as much a willing partner as him?’

Orla blushed and didn’t answer.

Alice was all set to continue with the lecture, but two nurses arrived to move the new mother to a ward and take the baby to the nursery, so she excused herself and went to look for a telephone. She rang Fion to let her know she was now an aunt.

‘Nip home as soon as you’ve got a minute,’ she said, ‘and let our Maeve know. She’ll be back from the General by now. She can tell Cormac when he gets home from school. Tonight, we’ll all come together to visit Orla and the baby.’

Maeve wrinkled her pert little nose. ‘It seems dead peculiar, having a sister who’s a mother.’

‘I know.’ Fion nodded her head vigorously. ‘Dead peculiar.’